http://store.steampowered.com/news/3792/
I wonder if this means Brad Wardell will stop working with Civ V.
I just can't support DRM, that while not TOO bad, helps enforce a near-monopoly. This may be a blow to the other DD providers- as this is the biggest game to do this so far.
Hopefully EWOM is everything I want, because now I'm relying on it.
(Note: I do use Steam, I just won't support being forced to use it on non-Valve products)
Borrowed from another site
[QUOTE=Nick Danger;9186285]I think it's pretty clear...First, when 2K Elizabeth said:They of course can compile multiple games. They just chose not to. I think the reason they chose not to is because steam required it be necessary to run steam in the background, even for store-bought dvd and even with single-player offline games. The reason being Steam wants to get on, and be running online on, as many computers as possible. They're also banking on most people not ticking the 'offline' option, so most civ5 players will have steam connected even when unnecessary -- many will have it on even when not playing civ5, but always on.The why is pretty obvious -- getting on as many machines as possible, and being connected, benefits steam tremendously. --More market share: not only to be able to make more deals like the one with civ5, but it also helps keep competitors at a disadvantage, and makes it harder for new competitors to enter.--More information collected: their privacy policy is too long to quote here (see [url]http://www.valvesoftware.com/privacy.html[/url]) but here's a part:"By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below." (emphasis mine)--More 'eyeballs' on its ads, so it can sell/charge more advertising.etc.While it's valuable for steam to be able to (exclusively?) sell the DD/DLC for Civ5 it's likely even more valuable that steam be installed and running on the number of pcs that will run civ5.My guess is this was presented to the civ5 devs from 'on high' and not of their initiation, and I take it as a sign that the 'suits' (Dr. Johnny Fever 1978) and not the gamers are calling this (and other?) shots.So my hunch is that this deal is really about getting steam on as many computers as possible, and 2k is getting a cut for forcing this on civ5 players.[/QUOTE]
That is the only logical assumption I can come up with, I believe 2k is gettting some sort of payola to shut Steam's competitors out.
Again - mods based on direct content taken from a paid DLC release would probably be between the company that made it (ie, not valve/steam), and the modders. I mean, isn't this already common place? Or do people normally take direct content from a paid releases, and release it as is free to the community?
Also, I suspect that the number of people with absolutely no internet connection, but who buy the latest video game release, is pretty low.
Anyway, interesting post Tas - but what ads? I only see ads for games on Steam itself...I even loaded up Steam to check, but I didn't see any. Am I missing them?
Being worried about PC gaming become a closed platform is hardly "Steam bashing".
Remember this post: At some point if things keep going the way they do, using Steamworks to be sold on Steam won't be an option, it'll be a requirement.
The problem isn't Valve or Steam. As I said earlier, you shouldn't want Impulse to dominate either or anyone.
Microsoft used to give away Windows basically for free to OEMs and OEMs could do whatever they wanted with Windows (change the shell, change the logon). Now, and I know this from bitter experience, you're not even allowed to change the freaking default wallpaper without special permission from Microsoft on first boot if your'e a PC OEM that bundles Windows. That's the kind of leverage Microsoft has -- now.
As a practical matter, on the PC, there's Steam and Impulse. The others aren't (imo) commercially viable (even Apple only breaks even on their app store and on iTunes).
Right now, Steam, by no means, is not a monopoly. If Blizzard came out with their Steam/Impusle competitor right now they'd take over or certainly make the claims that Steam is destined to rule seem pretty ridiculous. But that won't necessarily always be the case.
But that, again, has nothing to do with Steam or Valve being "bad". When you don't have a monopoly, the best way to gain more market share to is be incredibly generous (like Windows for Workgroups + Office being $7 at the OEM level). Once all alternatives are swept away...well, then things are different.
Frogboy: Given your acknowledgement of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior, using its deep pockets to under-price its product to eliminate competition (like OS/2) then, when they've destroyed competition, to then start dictating prices and terms ... I wonder why Stardock seems bent on helping it further this by using IE as a basis for Impulse instead of Firefox, Opera or another browser?
I am trying to get Impulse to switch to Webkit. It's purely a matter of cheapness.
You should see what he said regarding DLC and modding...
Frogboy: Woohoo for any alternative to IE.
Pretty obvious that you don't know much about the Civ modding community. Right now I could have Civ 4 vanilla (no expansions) and download mods for all the civs included in the expansion packs. I could also download mods for any of the buildings and whatnot that were added. I mean, it's not all that difficult to mod in a new civ or building.
So now if they continue with the DLC model of selling off new civs here and there, their financial interest is to shut down these mods. Before they couldn't, but now if all mods have to be "approved" and go thru Steam it's not hard to leap to the next step of what can and will happen. And what about the various bug fix mods that actually fix bugs in the game. Do those also not get approved because they may or may not cause stability issues. I could go on. Besides the fact, who in the heck is actually "approving" these mods. It's something to be very worried about.
The issue of user mods will be highlighted once Civilisation V is released. Similiar to the way 'Games for Windows Live' works, however on a per developer basis as opposed to the entire approval process being run by the service's owner, 2K will have the option to restrict the installation of mods if they so chose and run an approval process if they want to on mods made by the community. I haven't seen any offical details stating that they will restrict mods, and some games like Half-life 2 for example, don't apply any restrictions at all. Other games, like Modern Warfare 2, most certainly do and do so to ensure that their DLC, such as the pathetically named 'Stimulus Pack', have no opposition from fan made mods or maps - turning the PC into a closed platform to ensure that they can force DLC on their customers. Given how modable Civ IV was, I'd like to think that they'll be nice - however with the Suits making the decisions now at 2K as opposed to the developers, it's a very real possibility that Activision's example of how to use to Steam to milk the ever-loving-shit out of your customers is catching on. Dark times ahead, fellow gamers.
Just to touch on the "approval" question, I think I have an answer there to confirm the process. A friend of mine went for a job at 2K titled "Civilization Community Manager" a month ago. He needed lua, xml and c++ skills. Part of the role was to check uploaded mods to ensure no copyrights were breached, that the code was not malicious, and that no new processes were spawned.
He was going for the mod approver job. (He didn't get it, they hired from internally).
EDIT:
The job ad: http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx/viewjobrss.asp?cjid=21432&accountno=362
Thanks for that info Dale. I see That I am going to do some major research b4 purchasing any game in the future.
Lets get all the modders to join together and start to make our own free soarce games and to hell with these companies.
Wait - so you're saying people have copy/pasted the content from BTS and put it directly into the original? If so, that's pretty nice of Firaxis, I figured copying the leaderheads and all the art styles and code that went into released content would of been copyrighted.
Did Stardock let modders copy/paste all the content and code from the SINS expansions into the original? If not - they could really learn something from Firaxis, because as you say, Firaxis lets their modders do.
Otherwise, I don't know how you could of got something else out of "direct content from a paid release, and release it free to the community," aside from that - and with an added insult on top of it!
Edit -
Very interesting Dale.
OOo sounds fun, hopefully gonna be sum nice dramas comin. Like dem Iphone apps ya? I can haz that jack!
Mods will continue for the forseeable future, but will have to go thru 2K to be 'checked'.
Will there be other criteria for approval - such as not replicating or being too similar to DLC (even DLC they might someday but not currently offer)? Will copyright prevent making mods that resemble parts of other games? Will mods have to be DL'd from steam or 2k only, and not from sites like CivFanatics? Will non-reviewed mods be able to be installed and/or will they break the game? How long will approval require?
I can see mods like the HoF one being fast-tracked and having relatively little problems, but some of the others...
If all mods need to be checked and must go thru 2k, that's a big change. After their decision to force steam even for store-bought dvd-installed single-player games played offline (that sure is a mouthful, better acronymize it - SBDISPGPO) I'm not sure how much trust to extend them.
Is this the beginning of their morphing community mods into publisher-overseen DLC -- some offered free, some for pay?
In one of the video interviews, Dennis Shirk confirmed that mods will still be able to be downloaded from sites like WePlayCiv and CivFanatics, and installed manually like in Civ4. But they won't be "approved" by 2K or on the mod hub (until approved). I suspect this may impact on MP so you can only use approved mods in MP, not sure.
In terms of DLC, I would imagine that anything that takes 2K paid DLC and allows free distribution to everyone (even those who didn't purchase it) will be denied. One question I'd love answered is, for example, I make a WW2 mod and then later 2K release Stalin as a paid leader, is my mod now in breach because it would have Stalin in it?
And since (if the EULA is the same as Civ4's EULA) 2K would technically "own" any mods created, does that mean they will intercept a good mod (Combat Mod, Fall from Heaven, Rhye's) and then sell it as their DLC?
Many questions remain unanswered.
Well since I got bashed i went and started up as many of my steam games as I could from the .exe and about 60% of them launched without starting steam and the others launched steam before starting, Plenty from this decade heck Bioshock2 didn't load the steam client.
So i'll take the hit that for games tightly integrated into Steamworks you launch the client even when launching the .exe but you can go into offline mode and start the steamworks games just fine as well so there is no need to be connected to the internet the entire time your playing.
Of course their doing this to get you to look at the client and potentially use their store, are u that shocked by capitalism? Heck personally I am more of a partial socialist in my world view and on the list of capitalism run amuck this doesn't even qualify in my book. All I see is Steam getting in early on a market pretty much any idiot saw coming in 1997 and holding on to alot of the current marketshare because they have a good product. And its what 75% or so and competition is moving up namely Impulse and D2D. And Steam is a good product, granted it has flaws namely in the patch release management area (sometimes redownloading an entire client) but its pretty darn good otherwise.
Also if this is about Civ5 having an exclusive deal for download distribution via steam then I kinda get that but why isn't everyone screaming bloody murder over all the console exclusive titles, I mean heck thats not a small change to an executable thats a hardware specific it ain't ever going to work anywhere else thing. Plus exclusive deals are signed all the time in all sorts of industries. Is Sins, EWOM, or GalCiv available on Steam? There is a little bit of hypocrisy in all this.
And you know if Steam does get too big the anti-trust suits will come from everywhere and it'll get broken up or possibly even some good will come out of it like the integration being forced into an open standard. I mean thats really the goal here to have lotsa different services and one standard for your friends list. heck with Blizzard getting in on all of this and all the facebook integration happening you might just see facebook taking over as the friend list and steamworks losing alot of, har har, steam. These things always work out in the computer world.
I mean of all the things to fight about this is kinda crazy I have Impulse and Steam both sitting in my systray 99% of the time my computer is running and both services are great. Are people that afraid of technology? Can someone actually point out an argument that doesn't revolve around not wanting to run a 16kb process on their rigs? Or have to deal with one-time internet activation for DRM (offline mode works just fine). And personally I agree with Brad, I don't see the point in DRM beyond something fairly limited ( but would rather have it through a service because that way you don't lose cd keys 5 years down the road). But one-time internet activation being so horrible people won't buy civ5? Thats just crazy.
The second Steam requires you to be online all the time while your playing or throws ads up in games your playing I'll be glad to join the bandwagon but for now this all just sounds a bit farfetched.
@jam3, I think that most folk would want to avoid getting the anti-trust stage of things, and want to make sure that no-one ever gets it into their head that constant-internet-check is an acceptable form of DRM (Hi Ubisoft!).
I use both platforms and am generally happy with both. However I think that, if anything, Facebook has demonstrated how quickly a company which is generally trusted can spin around and bite you in the rear unless it is actively and vocally opposed whenever it toes the line.
For digital distribution, I think this is one of those moments where it's good to stand up and say, hey, wait just one gosh-darned second here!
As to why people are screaming bloody murder... well, here are some CIV specific reasons, which I've seen over at the civfanatics forum:
We need to watch out that existing services we use don't abuse the power they have like facebook.
facebook_plans_a_privacy_summit.html
The more we are forced into using this CRAP the more info they can collect and use.
1000s are deleting there facebook accounts but what if we were forced to use it.
I thought you might say that. It gets even worse. If people do mod, and the mod mimics stuff that is in one of their DLC or other paid add-ons, they will be sued!
Please, 16kb?
The new Steam client is often better- usually hovering between 6-12mb of ram. However, when it online mode, it can randomly (and I do mean randomly) balloon. Usually it gets into the 50mb territory, with it once going up to 100mb. This is me not playing a game (or touching it), the Steam overlay is disabled, and the friends list isn't signed in. And it's in mini-mode.
Furthermore, I shouldn't have to install/load a client to play a game when I didn't even buy it through that client.
Again, you don't understand how mods work for Civ do you? No need to directly copy and paste from BTS at all. Let me say this again...creating a new civ is not that hard. Once you know what the specs of say the Korea civ is, simply create a new civ in the game with those same specs. Maybe the leaderhead is different and maybe the special building art is a bit different/original but there you have it...Korea civ added to the game without buying a DLC or expansion. What's Firaxis going to do about it? They can't stop the mod. But now they can.
One of my favorite Civ 3 mods was Rhye's of Civilization. It added a couple dozen civs, changed various things about the default/built in civs, changed the whole tech tree, etc. Same for Civ 4. Assuming Civ 5 is just as moddable as they claim then the same thing can be done. Who needs to buy a DLC for Babylon when a dozen modders will have a Babylon civ ready within a week for free? But wait, 2K/Valve now controls what mods can be available for the game so they of course aren't going to allow the Babylon civ mod.
And what about a mod like Rhye's that say adds in a dozen civs and then a DLC comes out that has about half of them now "officially" in the game? Ooops....sorry Rhye, your mod is no longer approved.
Understand the issue now?
Lets remember that if you actually take content from a DLC and rerelease it as a mod, they definately will try and ban/remove/stop you since your distrobuting thier copyrighted materials without permission.
Considering that many (many!) mods have copyrighted material I can see 'false' drama being made (which my earlier failed joke post refrenced but was seriously far too vauge).
If you can still install and use manually then there wont be any problems.
As a side note: I would think elemental's offical mod distrobuting methods would have a similar "badness barrier" for mods. Lets just hope they don't try and censor sexy elf and dirty furry mods along with the "MyFirstCopyrightInfringementMod" mods.
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